Sometimes, football really is a game of inches.

36 inches, specifically, in the case of the Demopolis Middle School Tigers Monday night on the road at Thomasville. Down 13-8 with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, DMS faced third-and-one on the Thomasville 3-yard line. But DMS couldn’t control the snap and lost a yard falling on the loose ball. Back-to-back penalties then put the Tigers in fourth-and-long, and when they couldn’t convert Thomasville came away with the five-point victory.

The stalled drive was DMS’s third of the game inside the 10-yard line. DMS head coach Mark Cochrane says that the missed opportunities were the difference in the game.

“We felt like we were the best team,” he says, “[but] you’ve got to be able to put points on the board…you can’t do that against a good team like Thomasville.”

The loss ends DMS’s otherwise successful season on something of a down note. The Tigers finished at 4-2, with victories over Camden, Martin Middle, Jackson, and last Tuesday a dominant 22-6 over a previously undefeated Fayette Co. team.

“That was a big win,” Cochrane said. “That was the best we played this season…we weren’t the same team against Thomasville we were last Tuesday.”

Despite not putting together the same kind of performance as against Fayette Co., DMS still showed plenty of heart in responding to a 13-0 deficit entering the third quarter. Seventh-grader Demarcus James scored a touchdown early in the fourth to cut the lead to 13-6, and quarterback Jeremy Wallace raced in for the 2-point conversion to bring the Tigers within five.

But that was as close as DMS would come. Despite the loss, Cochrane was more than pleased with his team’s defensive effort, led by players like linemen Kendall Raby, linebacker Fred Irby, and rover Anthony Hardy.

“They’ve played well all year,” Cochrane said. “They made us what we were.”

What the Tigers were was a team that gained a tremendous amount of experience and enjoyed a great deal of success…even if the very last bit of success didn’t quite come through.

“We had a good year. 4-2 is a good record,” Cochrane says, “but we should have been 5-1.”